So, this involves a certain level of skill or development that not everyone who starts running reaches. So, to experience this phase involves both running until you are tired, but having the ability to maintain one’s rhythm despite this. This phase, in my experience, is the product of two things: tiredness and rhythm. This is, in essence, the way Hume thought of us: as bundles or collections of thoughts, feelings, emotions and so on, but with no thinking subject lying behind these bundles. That is: the phase where there are thoughts but apparently no thinker. This is the phase where the mind has seemingly disappeared, and is replaced by thoughts that seem to come from nowhere. The Humean phase-named after the seventeenth century Scottish philosopher, David Hume-is more difficult to get to reach. Implicated in this sort of experience is a kind of separation of mind and body-with the mind being in charge-that is similar to the way Descartes thought of humans in general. Just get me to the corner of such-and-such, and then you can walk for a while. This is where your mind is making bargains with your body, or telling it little lies. Anyone who has run a mile can understand what I called the Cartesian phase-after the seventeenth century French philosopher, Descartes. You find the same kind of correlation-at least in my experience-between the various phases of the run. This is what is known as intrinsic value. In the end, if you have run long and hard enough, you discover a certain sort of value in running: a value that running has for its own sake. That is, I think, because running does something to you that is quite different from, and independent of, its health benefits, its effect on your waistline, even the way it makes you feel and the enjoyment you get from running. The way to tell if someone is running for instrumental reasons is to ask them a question: if there were a pill that could replicate all the benefits of running-heath, looks, even enjoyment-would you keep running? In my experience, the longer a person has been running, the more likely they are to answer ‘yes’: to say they would continue running. This is what I mean by an instrumental reason: running, for them, is an instrument, a means to an end. But whatever the reason is, people who start running do so for a reason, and the reason is something outside the running: something that the running is supposed to help them achieve. That is, perhaps, a more idiosyncratic reason. Personally I started running because I found myself sharing a house with a rather rapacious canine that would eat all my possessions if he were not kept continually exhausted. They don't like the way they look is another.

When people start running, they typically do so for instrumental reasons. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play

Running with the pack mark rowlands